January 8: Seven people slain at the Brown's Chicken and Pasta in Palatine.

March 18: Palatine authorities arrest a 26-year-old Arlington Heights man who allegedly admitted supplying false information that sent investigators searching for a possible link to the Jan. 8 massacre.1995

November 29: Brown's president Frank Portillo raises questions about how investigators handled a suspect in early 1993, and asks two civic watchdog groups to review the conduct of Palatine police officials and members of a task force that was specially formed to investigate the slayings.1996

April 24: The Palatine Village Board unanimously passes a resolution supporting the Palatine Police Department and its multi-agency task force in its investigation of police handling of the Brown's murders.1997

January 7: Forensic technology reveals a fingerprint previously undetected on key evidence that had been dusted and eyeballed countless times by dozens of investigators.

November 20: The Better Government Association releases a report on Palatine Police Chief Jerry Bratcher, contending that his national reputation as a top law-enforcement official, as well as business relationships with village officials and other suburban police chiefs, insulated Bratcher from outside scrutiny by village officials and professional peers.The report also states that inexperienced Palatine police officers made crucial early mistakes that hampered the investigation into the Brown's slayings.1999

February 9: A Cook County judge throws out a lawsuit filed by parents of two victims of the 1993 Brown's slayings, dismissing their arguments that the fast-food chain didn't do enough to protect their sons.2000

April 4: The task force working to solve the 1993 killings begins taking DNA samples from past suspects, signaling that authorities are taking a new forensic approach to the unsolved crime.

April 7: Police looking into the 1993 massacre believe they have the killer's genetic profile, extracted from DNA found on a partially eaten chicken dinner at the crime scene.

August 30: A 48-page report offers some vindication for Palatine police by discrediting an earlier study that ridiculed the investigation as a parade of mistakes by police agencies consumed with ego and outside interests.2001

April 27: A demolition crew razes the building of Brown's on Northwest Highway.2002

May 17: One of two men being questioned in connection with the unsolved slayings makes a videotaped confession.Tribune archives contributed to this report.

HARRISBURG — The State Supreme Court has rejected Attorney General Kathleen Kane's attempt to throw out a grand jury investigation into whether she or someone in her office leaked investigative secrets to a newspaper to discredit critics.

Catasauqua police officer Scott M. Rothrock had already been stabbed once in the chest with a 13-inch butcher knife and was trying to block more thrusts as he lay on his back in a snow bank Feb. 23 in east Allentown.